The Dragons of Heaven (35 page)

“They fear me.” His voice was tinged with surprise at the novelty. “I am the only shadow here that he does not control.”

“Well, that's something. I'm glad to know I can leave the bag and its contents in your excellent care.” I gave him a smile and another scratch behind his ears. His tail twitched in guilty pleasure.

I left the rat to his baubles and went in search of clothes. Sure enough, the wardrobe in the bedroom was filled with designer clothes and underthings, all of them hyper-sexualized in one way or another. Good god, this guy needed a Bond girl to get his adolescent fantasies out of his system. I thought of my giggle-fest with Si Wei and had to stifle a laugh. Maybe we hadn't been that far off the mark.

The aborted giggle turned into a yawn. I couldn't face wedging myself into one of those slinky ensembles just yet, so I lay down on the bed and rationalized a nap. After all, it had been almost two days, and I did need my wits about me.

I fell instantly asleep, and almost as instantly, I dreamed.

I stood in a pagoda of widely-spaced bamboo beams. They stretched above me like interlaced, golden bars. A pretty reflecting pool rimmed with well-polished stones sat in the center of the pagoda, and a giant cricket, its metallic carapace burnished blue-green, stood beside me. Twin antennae twitched, shining with a pearlescent light. It regarded me with patient, viridian eyes. I'd been the subject of that gaze before.

I was still in my bathrobe, pearls around my neck. Figured. At least I wasn't naked.

“Forgive me,
Lung Xin Niang
, for not coming to meet you earlier when you called. I did not think you would desire me to leave my charge,” she said, though on reflection I was pretty sure all I heard was a cricket's chirp.

“Mother? Mother, is that you?” Mei Shen's face pressed up against the bars, ten times larger than it had been on Lung Di's big screens. The
qilin
chirped a warning.

“Hush, Lung Mei Shen Mi. Do not alert your nurse. Your mother is here, but she cannot walk these halls. If you wish to speak with her, you must practice subtlety.”

Subtlety was not my daughter's strong suit, any more than etiquette was mine. Watching Mei Shen trying to school her features into nonchalance, I felt a momentary sympathy with Jian Huo's pained forbearance when he had to watch me bungle through the complex social rules of our life.

“Oh. Yes, I can do that. Hello, Mother,” she said in a whisper as loud as a yell, though that might have been a matter of perspective, what with my reduced size. She poked a finger through the bars, as wide and long as my leg. I hugged it anyways, and kissed the bend of her knuckle. No one can rival the weirdness that is my life.

“Oh, Maybug. I'm so glad you're all right. I'm so sorry I didn't believe you about the nurse.” I wanted to babble more apologies, but the words came too fast, choking against one another.

“It's all right, Mother. I'm fine, but I have been bored, even with the
qilin
to keep me company, and I miss you, and Father, and Mian Zi. It's no fair that he got to leave and I didn't. I hope he is as bored as I am. He had best not be having any fun. Father promised to show us how to fly kites when we returned. He better not have shown Mian Zi without me. I will never forgive him if he has.”

More than anything else, Mei Shen's torrent of words convinced me that she had come to little harm. I sent the
qilin
a grateful look of apology. I should never have doubted her.

“Are we going home soon, mother? I should like to go home.” Mei Shen ran out of words, blinking at me with trust that I hoped wasn't misplaced.

“Yes, Maybug. I've come to take you home.” I reached out to touch the shadows, but everything beyond the cage was smudged in a cocoon of viridian fire. I glanced again at the
qilin
; her antennae waved at me.

“He cannot know I am here,” she said. “Or that I've brought you here in your dreams. You must find your own way to us.”

“That's OK,” I said with a shrug. I'd have been disappointed if things ended up being that easy. Really. “I have a plan. Mei Shen, I need you to tell me everything about your nurse.”

I spent the next hour plotting with my daughter. It was a strange sort of mother-daughter bonding, and I had to engage in logical gymnastics to keep her from launching a dozen ill-conceived plans. My respect for Mian Zi vaulted to new heights, given that it often fell to him to keep her out of trouble. The
qilin
sat apart from us, watching with many-faceted eyes. I wondered how many of Mei Shen's plans she'd had to foil in the last several months.

The world grew fuzzy around the edges. Mei Shen's whisper-shout receded to the edge of hearing. I tried to answer but couldn't speak. The
qilin's
voice resounded throughout my skull.

“Our time here is done. I dare not bring you again. Do not fear. I will do as I have pledged. That which is Lung Huang's will come to no harm while in my care. Wake, and remember.”

The fuzz cleared into darkness. I opened my eyes to a ceiling patterned with spiraling tessellations. It was hypnotic. I forced my eyes away. The bedroom was still empty, and I was still in my robe, but I imagined I could hear Templeton snoring in the other room. Poor rat. I'd run him through the wringer, and we weren't even half-done.

Padding over to the wardrobe, I opened it and regarded the contents with a heavy sigh. Spandex and sequins winked back at me. I was getting too old for this shit.

“
Y
ou look lovely
,” were Lung Di's words when he came to collect me an hour later. I said nothing and kept my face impassive. If we were going for literal interpretations, then I wasn't giving him any more than I'd agreed to. I'd chosen a dress because I didn't have a choice. I'd listen to his manifesto. But for the rest of his games, he was on his own. He escorted me down the carpeted hallway in silence, back to the room with all his toys.

“I imagine it must be nice to wear something that doesn't take an hour to figure out how to get into,” he offered as his second sally. It was, but I wasn't about to admit that to him. I just pursed my lips with a non-committal grunt and let him seat me at a table set for two.

In keeping with the rest of his businessman-playboy shtick, the dining area was furnished in chrome and glass, just off the main room. Above us, the underwater skylight continued to shift with the murky glimmers of the Shanghai skyline.

My brief perusal of the wardrobe had yielded a blue silk wraparound dress as the least sexualized of the offerings, but I was revising that opinion. When I sat down, the damn thing kept sliding open along the line of my thigh, revealing way more of that skin than I was comfortable showing to anyone but Jian Huo or a gynecologist. After a few futile attempts to tug it into obedience, I gave up on subtlety and bunched it closed between my legs, clamping my thighs shut to keep it that way. It would wrinkle the silk, but I didn't care. I wasn't trying to impress anyone.

Lung Di fell silent again as two waiters served us the first course. They looked mortal. I didn't know whether to be more surprised by them or by the plate of food they placed before me.

“Tuna tartar with persimmon chutney,” Lung Di said, in response to my raised eyebrows. He flipped a napkin into his lap and lifted his fork. I couldn't help staring. I hadn't seen a fork in ages. “You should eat. I imagine it has been a while since you've eaten, and much longer since you've had anything this good. If ever.”

I wanted to be pigheaded, but I was hungry, and the food looked edible. It reminded me of Jack. A reluctant smile tugged at my lips. I fumbled with my own fork, trying to recall how to use one, and took a cautious bite. It was delicious.

“It's good,” I conceded. “What did you do, seduce away the Shanghai Marriott's executive chef?”

“Hilton, actually. The owner's brat insulted his pea puree. It was either come work for me or waste away in a Hong Kong prison for poisoning her morning Weetabix.”

I stopped chewing. Poison hadn't occurred to me.

Lung Di smiled. “Please don't concern yourself. If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead.”

“Well, that's comforting,” I muttered. I took another cautious bite. We continued to eat in silence. It would have been unnerving if the food weren't so good. Who was I kidding? It was unnerving as hell.

The salad course came next, some kind of tomato and salmon thing.

“Grilled heirloom tomatoes and goat cheese.” Lung Di said. I goggled. I hadn't had cheese in… God, too long. Like most Chinese, Jian Huo wasn't a fan of cheese.

I paused with the fork halfway to my lips. Remembered that the first bite's free. Set it back down and struggled to recall my purpose.

“I believe you had a manifesto to deliver?” I said, as the waiters placed the next remove before us. I took a sip of wine – when had I been given wine? – and tried to look stern and businesslike.

Lung Di regarded me for a moment over his fork. He placed the bite of food back on his plate, untouched. “Do you really want to disturb this lovely meal?”

“Yes. You're being charming… or at least, not threatening. The food is good, and somewhere along the way I acquired a glass of wine. I don't trust any of it, and I'd rather be reminded of that.”

He smiled. “Hardly an argument designed to encourage me to speak.”

I leaned back and folded my arms, ignoring the siren call of whatever that was on my plate. Some kind of shrimp lime salsa on fried bananas, though I imagined there was a fancier name for it. Lung Di regarded his own plate with a sigh.

“Very well. You are as pugnacious as your daughter, you realize.”

“You can skip the compliments.”

He hid a smile behind his napkin. “What has my brother told you of me?”

I frowned, unsure what angle he was trying to play. There was no question in my mind that he had an angle. He mistook my expression for reticence.

“Oh, come now. He must have told you all manner of horror stories, or you would never have risked my wrath by refusing me entry that day on the mountain. So, what am I guilty of, according to my little brother?”

I tucked away that little tidbit for later consideration. I knew that Jian Huo was older than Shui Yin and Lung Pan, but I hadn't realized that he was younger than Lung Di. I didn't know what to make of that.

“He told me that the two of you used to be inseparable. You'd ditch heaven to go down to earth and mess around with mortals; innocent stuff, mostly, which is why your older siblings let you get away with it. After Jian Huo got busted for the whole writing incident, they cracked down. He tried to get you to stop sneaking down the mountain, but you wouldn't listen. You mocked him for being a kiss-ass. You started going off on your own, started manipulating people just to see what would happen. At first it was small stuff like theft and rape and murder, but you kept pushing. You started wars to see who would win and how. You stacked the deck in favor of one side or another to see how people would react. You loosed plagues and natural disasters to watch how humans dealt with the suffering.”

I took a sip of wine. I was good at playing ignorant about my lover and his family. Easier than dealing with the knowledge that they were gods. It was hard to comprehend the scale of havoc that Lung Di had wreaked. It was like reciting facts out of a history book. I tried to imagine all the individual faces that had been affected, but it was just too big. I took another sip of wine and waited as the waiters brought in the next remove. My appetite had deserted me.

“Jian Huo was the one who discovered what you were doing,” I forged on. “He tried to talk to you, to understand why you were doing it. He tried to stop you, but you were too far gone. When the others found out – when Jian Huo told them – they exiled you. Since then, you've involved yourself even more deeply in mortal affairs. Most of the atrocities of this past century – Mao, the Red Guard – you were involved in all of that.”

“Ah yes. The Long March.” He smiled fondly, as though that terrible exodus were a happy memory. “But later, the good chairman took exception to my existence and decided my kind needed to be eradicated. He was remarkably dedicated in his efforts, if ultimately ineffectual. The Triads were a useful buffer.”

Ineffectual, he called it. Hundreds of thousands dead, ancient monasteries and cultural sites destroyed, a whole nation terrorized for half a century and still recovering from the impact of Mao's policies, and he was able to shrug all this off. Jian Huo was right. Lung Di was a monster.

He ignored my look of revulsion in favor of digging in. When I didn't continue after a few moments, he set down his fork again. “An interesting version of the events.”

“Are you going to try to deny it?”

“No, no. It's all true. Much less damning than I expected. It appears my brother is loath to admit just how reprehensible I am. Or maybe he still harbors some affection for me.” Lung Di looked up and scratched his jaw. “No. It's almost certainly the former.”

He leaned back again and favored me with a lazy smile. Here it came. Manifesto time. I steeled myself.

“I'm going to make an intuitive leap and guess that you're not an ‘ends justify the means' sort, are you?”

“No. Because they don't. In the doing of a thing, the how and the why matters.”

“Now, where have I heard that before?” he drawled. I shifted uncomfortably. Just because I was parroting Jian Huo's words didn't mean I didn't believe them.

Lung Di's smirk dimmed. “But how does that work when you're up against something that has the power to crush you without a thought? Worse, something that will use your weakness to further its agenda? You can't just defeat such monsters with hugs and positive thinking. Your Gandhi and your King, their peaceful protests succeeded because they were already part of the elite classes. They were equipped with the weapons of social capital and rhetoric. But what about those who are not? What about those for whom the only recourse is desperate violence? Like your Middle Eastern terrorists, or those Zapatistas in Central America? Or your own Irish people a century ago? Your philosopher, Nietzsche, observed that if you fight monsters, you become a monster yourself. What if it is more than that? When the monsters are so much more powerful, your
only
hope to defeat them is to become a monster. But it
can
be done. That's what I've learned in my centuries of pitting humans against each other. It is something that none of my siblings is willing to admit about humans, not even Lung Huang, who knows you best. You lot can be more powerful than gods, given the right incentive.”